CFP – In/Between
Sixth Annual In/Between Conference
March 5-6, 2015
The School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics invites papers based on all current research by our faculty and graduate students. No matter your topic, we’d love to hear what you’re working on! Important goals of the School’s annual conference include showcasing the diversity of our research projects and sharing with colleagues our current interests.
In addition to welcoming papers on all topics, we are designating a theme that we invite you to explore: Border Crossings. Please see below for an elaboration of this theme. The purpose of designating a conference theme is to provide an opportunity for extended discussion of one particular concept that ramifies for the scholarly disciplines represented in the School. By offering a broad theme that connects the keynote address to various papers from different disciplines, we hope to foster a School-wide conversation that can highlight common interests as well as expose us to new insights.
We are accepting proposals for individual papers as well as panels and roundtables. Please send 250-word abstracts to Heather Cohen (cohenh@uic.edu) and Colleen McQuillen (cmcquill@uic.edu) by Friday, December 12, 2014. At the top of your abstract, please include the following information: 1. Your name and department; and 2. whether your proposal is for an individual paper (15 minutes), a panel, or a roundtable (one hour). If you are submitting a proposal for a panel or a roundtable, please include the names of the individuals who comprise the panel or roundtable. If the proposal is for a panel, please also include the titles and short abstracts of the panelists’ papers. By mid-January we expect to have a draft of the conference program.
2015 Theme: Border Crossings
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the relationship among identity, language, and location has become more complex due to the increased mobility of individuals and groups, as well as the rise of virtual communities in the cyber-sphere. The migration of people--whether chosen or coerced, national or international, legal or illegal, imagined or experienced—may result in the displacement, dispersal, and creation of ethno-linguistic groups. The globalization of ideas and cultural trends challenges national borders and ideas about cultural essentialism, and interpolates consumers with shared tastes and values.
Border crossings also complicate the ways we categorize people, their languages, and their cultural productions. We invite papers that explore the consequences and representations of border crossings, broadly understood to include literal and figurative movements and transgressions. Topics that speak to this year’s theme might include, among others: bilingualism and dialects; language policies and education; the brain’s processing of language; translation, adaptation, and appropriation; mass and social media; marginality, exclusion, and social justice; hybridity and postmodernism; postcolonialism and posthumanism; fantasy and escape; crime and imprisonment. This list is certainly not exhaustive; we welcome your creative approaches to the theme!